The Meiji Era

The Meiji Era, 1868 to 1912, named for Emperor Meiji, began with the restoration of direct imperial rule after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and became one of world history's most rapid and thorough programs of national modernization, deliberately undertaken to prevent Japan from suffering the colonial subjugation being imposed on China and much of Asia by Western powers. The new government abolished the feudal domain system, dismantled the samurai class's legal privileges, built a national conscript army and modern navy modeled on Western militaries, and constructed railways, telegraph lines and modern industry at speed, all under a new 1889 constitution that established a limited constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, the Diet. Japan's new military strength was demonstrated decisively in victories over Qing China in 1894-95 and, still more strikingly to the world, over Russia in 1904-05, the first modern defeat of a European power by an Asian nation. The era closes with Emperor Meiji's death in 1912.